二十五年的實驗6
赴英進修

陳碧華 執筆 

政府的鎖國政策不知讓台灣下一代的英語教育倒退多少年?世界各國因為網際網路的發達而如火如荼的學習英文,連一直被台灣人民不放在眼裡的中國大陸,更是以黑馬姿態縱橫國際求才現場,夾著人多勢眾財力雄厚,席捲優秀師資。我和錫東因為常参與國際會議,近年來與大陸學者常在會議場所中相遇,深深感受到他們來勢洶洶,也很為台灣不曾長進的現象憂心忡忡,我們擔心台灣人才的培育並沒有國際接軌,即使政府的口號喊的震天價響,但下一代的英文,不但沒有整體提升,反倒退步。


 

更糟的是父母的決定嚴重受到專家學者的言論影響,當時教育部利用一些專家學者似是而非的研究結果,全盤否決幼兒學英文的功效,扼殺下一代輕鬆自然學習英語的機會,荒謬的是這些所謂的專家沒有任何人有真正從事幼兒英語教育的經驗,只憑著一些採樣數字,就可以到處發表言論,反對幼兒學習英語。身處在這個是非不分黑白顛倒的社會,我覺得我必須挺身而出,為真相說話。因此我選擇再度回到研究所,針對幼兒學習英文做研究。為了涵蓋世界上兩大英語系國家不同的制度,特別選擇英國約克大學,進入幼兒英語教育研究所就讀。這次我直接以康乃爾幼稚園的孩子做研究對象,探討幼兒英語學習各種特點。
 

兩年中利用寫論文的機會,我發現幼兒學習英文的優勢無庸置疑,但因為環境關係會有盲點,孩子來自不同台灣家庭,發展出一些自創的英語,雖然他們彼此溝通無礙,但我擔心這些錯誤,會深植在腦海中很難改正,唯一解決方式就是改造環境,增加幼兒接觸正確英文環境的機會。為達到這目的,2001年我們成立台灣第一個英語兒童圖書館,我認為孩子必須養成獨立閱讀的能力,如此才不會侷限於課堂上片面的學習。為了增加孩子正確的input,2002年康乃爾正式在電台播出「彩虹時間」英語兒童故事,我希望藉著孩子喜愛聽故事的心理,邀請外國老師錄製各種好聽有趣的故事,每天晚上在孩子就寢時間播出,當作床邊故事。七八年來我很感動外國老師努力的創作各種有趣又有教育性的故事,這些完全對廣播外行的老師,竟然幫助康乃爾連續三年奪得教育電台最佳外製兒童節目,後來太陽以及好家庭電台都加入播出陣容,每周播出至今。
 

收音機聽故事雖然有趣,但現場說故事更可以與小朋友互動。受到台中市文化局以及美國在台協會邀請,康乃爾也開始每個月在文化中心、國立圖書館及敦煌書局提供英文故事時間,我希望藉由康乃爾寶貴的資源,服務無法到康乃爾上課的孩子,拉進英文雙峰現象和城鄉差距。現在我們更驕傲受到台中市政府的委託為全台中市國小英語教師開立英語講座課程,分享我們的教學資源。


A Twenty-Five Year Experiment 6
Studying In The UK

By Bih-Hua Chen 

The ban on teaching English to young children made the students lose their competitiveness to their peers from other countries in the international society.  It was very sad to see the government make such a bad policy which was clearly against the world trend.  Due to the development of technology and the internet, every country in the world has tried its best to prepare their youngsters to be proficient in English.  Even China has sent many head hunters to recruit teachers abroad which had never been done before.  Shyi-Dong and I also noticed that the scholars from China who attended the international conferences had become much more threatening.  The reason was that their command of English was impressive.  It was ironic that the government ran the slogan of internationalizing the country everywhere, but young children were deprived of learning English.

To make things worse, the professors and researchers associated with the government strongly voiced the drawbacks of sending children to learn English at a young age.  It was ridiculous to let those people who had no hand-on experience in teaching young children English to speak for the government.  It was frustrating to see the truth distorted in this way, so I decided to go back to school to do more research.  I hoped that my findings could verify the mistakes the government was making.  In order to compare two different systems in the world, I chose York University in the UK as my second graduate studies in Education.  This time I focused on teaching English as a second language to young children and I used Cornel students as the specimen samples.

In two years I made numerous observations and studied Cornel students’ language skills development intensively.   I noticed that there was no doubt about the benefit of learning English at a young age; however, there were some problems that needed to be fixed.  Even though we used an immersion program, the students developed an interlingua.  They had no difficulty communicating with each other, but I was afraid that the mistakes would imprint on their minds forever.  It seemed that the only solution was to give them more exposure to English after school.  In order to achieve this goal, I launched a radio program in 2002, Rainbow Time which focused on stories.  Our foreign teachers started to compose a variety of interesting stories and recorded them in our own sound room.  This was an extremely difficult task because all the stories had to be interesting and creative, but none of the teachers had experience in broadcasting.  Amazingly, the program got lots of attention from the public and over seven years we have been invited to air it on three radio stations.  We were honored to receive ‘the Best Children’s Program’ award from Education Radio for three consecutive years.

In addition to broadcasting, we publish monthly magazines which consist of three different levels of English and lots of colorful illustrations.  Moreover, we have been invited by the city government and AIT (equivalent to American Embassy) to offer story times at public libraries.  We are very happy to offer these community services to children who can’t afford to attend Cornel.  Now we are proud to be appointed by the government to train all the elementary schools’ English teachers at Cornel.

 

兒童雙語幼稚園:
康乃爾&康爾嘉英語【官方網站】http://www.ecornel.com.tw
康乃爾&康爾嘉英語【facebook粉絲團】http://www.facebook.com.tw/cornelfans
康乃爾&康爾嘉英語【Youtube影音網】http://www.youtube.com/user/corneltai

英文有聲書雜誌:
彩虹時間兒童英語故事有聲月刊【部落格】http://www.wretch.cc/blog/CRainbowTime
彩虹時間兒童英語故事有聲月刊【facebook粉絲團】http://www.facebook.com.tw/rtfans

arrow
arrow

    康乃爾英語 發表在 痞客邦 留言(0) 人氣()